I'm Just a Barn Owl

I'm just a barn owl. During the day I sit high up here and stagger in a corner under the roof of the old barn. Almost no one notices that I'm here. It happens from time to time that I make a dark sound - UHU, u-hu. The sound seems to linger in the barn for a few seconds, but after that it is quiet. I'm mostly silent, and when they look for me they cannot see me in the shades.

For many years I have had my place here, high under the roof up in this dark corner. All these years I've been here  as a lonely observer.

A seer - that's what I am. From up here, I have a wide view of everything that happens down in the large barn room. I've seen people come and go, I've seen some who have been confident and happily in love, and I've seen those who carry a weight of misery and loneliness.

They're all here for a reason. They apply here because they are the kind of humans who want to be alone. Alone as an individual, or alone together, as a couple. Quite many come in fact here two together, young couples who are holding hands. They want to be less visible. I feel that that's the main reason for why they come here. They want to hide from the scrutiny of the others. That's what this barn has been over the years - a place where many people have sought to get away from the prying eyes of the others.

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The barn is a huge wooden building with a tall tower at the eastern end. In earlier times, the barn was full of life. During spring, summer and fall the farmer and his family worked on the farm. In addition, many boys and maids worked in the fields, mowing the grass, raking it together and hanging it on hesjer (grain staves and steel wire), so that the grass could dry and become hay which was then loaded on the horse-drawn carriage and brought into the barn for storage.

I saw all this in the days when I was a little girl owl. I sat next to my mother owl and watched from the waddle down on all the people walking into the barn. When I think back today, it seems like a hundred years ago, even though I know that this happened only a few decades back in time.

At times, the barn was reminiscent of an enormous church room, a kind of rural cathedral of life where man hesitantly ascended the steps of the outer stone staircase and entered through the great door. When they entered the armory, they greeted each other silently and earnestly and walked with movements as in a slow motion into the church room. Some stopped as if they were hesitant, or maybe it was to take care of and remember this moment, the solemn experience of being in the great church room? They moved slowly up the aisle and peered with awe high and low around them. Many of them went all the way to where the pulpit would have stood, and they went even further, to the very end of the barn to the east, where the altarpiece would have stood, if this had been a large church and not just an old barn.

I feel that what I witnessed at that time, in my youth, was something that most adults have a hard time seeing, and it is something akin to eternal truths. I saw young, innocent people enter the barn in a state of bliss, happily unaware of the difficult and painful things that would later happen in their lives. I loved seeing these young people, filled with confidence, each of them optimistic bearers of hope and expectations for the future. They represent all the good things in life that happen between young people who have not yet been affected by life's grief, bitterness, painful losses, betrayals or thoughts of revenge.

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Many years later, when I had grown up, I sat one night in my hiding place high up. I noticed a young couple. He was the same age as her. They were probably 17 or 18 years old. She walked in front of him and he went after her, inside the large room where the farmer used to dry the hay in the past. The two young people went far into the innermost part of the barn, so that they were out of my sight. I tried to be completely quiet and listen, but it was almost impossible to hear anything.

Night came, and I was out for a couple of hunting trips. In the gray light in the morning I suddenly heard noises from down there. I saw that the young couple came walking and went out through the 'armory' and down into the field. He went first now. He held her hand and walked through the large room with big steps while she came tripping after with quick, small steps.

Later that summer I saw a slightly older couple, perhaps in their late twenties, coming in and walking towards the innermost part of the barn. I noticed these two a few more times when they came in the same way, looking behind them as if they feared being seen by someone. He went behind her and looked back over his shoulder as they went in towards their secret place deep inside. But I noticed that the last times they stayed shorter inside. When they had been there for a while and were done, they came out again. Unlike before, they did not come out together. She came out first. She was in a hurry and seemed to be running away from him. He came walking more calmly after her, and did not seem to be in a hurry.

A few days later I saw them again. They visited the barn a last time. Now he was the one who came out first, and it took a long, long time before she also came strolling out. I could see that she was not okay.

 - 

Then a couple of years passed. Fewer people came and went into the secret passage at the bottom of the barn. But then one night, when I was sitting up on my waddle, I heard footsteps and human voices. It felt good because the voices seemed happy. I turned my head, and I could see there was a couple who came inside the barn again. I recognized the young girl. She had grown up now. She had matured and she had another man with her. It rained all night, and they stayed in there until dawn.

When they came out in the first gray light of the day they were very quiet. But I could see in their body language that they were fine. They walked and held tightly around each other, and they fooled around on their way out. When I let a little Uhu-u escape me as a kind of comment, she jumped a little and looked up at where I was sitting. It was exciting. I do not think they saw me, but they knew I was there and they knew I was witnessing their secret meeting.

Time passed and I waited to see more, but there was little to see. I thought of these two lovers, and I would have liked to get to see more of them. I was a little excited about what happened to the two, especially because I recognized the young girl from the first date she had had with a younger man in there. I had somehow become a little familiar with her. But the weeks and months went by and I understood that they might have gone away or had moved to another place.

 - 

Now, it's calm everywhere around here.

I'm just a barn owl sitting high up here in a corner under the roof.

I see everything, I hear everything.

I say nothing.

I think.

I remember.

There was a time when I was not alone here. We were two. He was the one I had. He was a good, reliable owl dad. I knew I could trust him. He would never have run away from me like that, without a word. I am sure something bad happened to him. But I have no idea what. Just that I heard gun shots the day he did not come back. But I cannot believe the hunters have shot him. Hunting owls has been prohibited as long as I can remember in this country, so it seems rather unlikely.

I miss him. He was such a good, faithful partner. He was the one who flew out in the night and got us what we needed to survive; frogs, mice, and other small rodents.

Sometimes I think of him. I ask myself questions about him, and about the time we spent together. Why he disappeared. And I try to imagine how it would have been, if he had not disappeared. Or if he had come back after a while. The life we ​​would have had together, two night owls who had started something good, a life together, a cohabitation that was not completed.

Sometimes when I think of him I can see him. It's like I'm dreaming. I see him come flying silently through the barn. He lands on the shelf next to me, he sits here by my side, and almost everything is as it was before. In the dream.

 - 

From time to time I still see humans who walk alone in the shades of the barn. I notice those individuals as they walk alone, in the midst of others. They go there with their longing, the longing for the one they have not yet met.

I imagine that I can communicate, talk to humans. I think I can have a secret dialogue with them, here in this big room in the barn.

I'm just a barn owl. A night owl. I am the one who sees when you don't think you are seen.

Who am I?

Who are you?

Who are we, really?